CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwire - July 18, 2011) - Atikwa Resources Inc. ("Atikwa" or the "Company") (News - Market indicators). is pleased to announce that it has significantly expanded the development potential of its Roncott property through a rolling option farm-in on 22 sections of land contiguous to its producing 7-27 well and the existing Roncott Field. Atikwa will pay 100% of the costs associated with the drilling of one vertical well to earn the right to participate in a rolling option on a 50/50 basis. The rolling option is designed to earn two sections of land for every additional well drilled.

The Company's 7-27 well is currently the best producing vertical well in the pool with stabilized production of approximately 20 barrels per day over the last year. Based on industry data, management believes that a horizontal well drilled into a similar quality Bakken reservoir could produce from five to seven times that of a vertical well. President Sean Kehoe stated: "We are very excited about finally being able to move forward with this play. We have been working for over a year with a number of entities in an effort to build a larger position in and around our successful 7-27 test well and the main pool. We now have enough running room in a Bakken pool that has a history of producing oil economically from vertical wells, due to that fact, this should be an exciting horizontal candidate."

The Roncott field in Saskatchewan was discovered in 1956 as a Bakken formation field that was capable of producing economic, 40 degree API oil, from conventional vertical wells. Government data estimates that there is 10 million barrels of oil in place, however over the life of the pool industry has only extracted about 8% of that or 800,000 barrels of oil from essentially four vertical wells. It is that remaining 9.2 million barrels that the Company plans to target and potentially expand with a horizontal drilling program.

Vertical wells in this pool will qualify for a 50,000 bbl royalty incentive volume with horizontal wells qualifying for 100,000 bbl under the same incentive; consequently the Company will only pay a 2.5% Crown royalty, during this period. The low royalties and the lighter quality crude oil, combine to give favorable cash netbacks for production. 

This news release contains forward‐looking statements relating to the Company's plans and other aspects of the Company's anticipated future operations, strategies, financial and operating results and business opportunities. Forward‐looking statements typically use words such as "anticipate", "believe", "project", "expect", "plan", "intent" or similar words suggesting future outcomes, statements that actions, events or conditions "may", "would", "could" or "will" be taken or occur in the future, or consists of statements regarding estimates of future production, operating costs or other expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions or statements about future events or performance. Statements regarding reserves are also forward‐looking statements, as they reflect estimates as to the expectation that the deposits can be economically exploited in the future. Although the Company believes that the expectations represented in such forward‐looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. As a consequence, actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in the forward‐looking statements and you should not unduly rely on forward‐looking statements. The forward‐looking statements contained in this news release are made as the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward‐looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. The term barrels of oil equivalent ("boe") may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. A conversion ratio for gas of 6 mcf: 1 boe is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead.